Reckoning in Ice, page 13
I reflected on luck. The prudent man will discount chance in planning his affairs, but luck plays – has always played – an enormous part in human destiny. Most marriages, for instance – in the Western world, at any rate – are a matter of luck – of the chance meeting of a man and woman on holiday, in an office, at a party, at a dance. One should discount luck, but not ignore it.
Then I reasoned that chance is, by its nature, impartial and that individual gain or loss from chance is not a simple equation. If it had been lucky for Y to meet me in Perth it had also been lucky for me to meet Y. Y had already made use of the meeting. I had not, because I had not realised that it had taken place – if it had. Having nothing but assumptions to go I decided to assume that I had met Y in Perth. Where would that get us?
It might lead to Y’s identity. You have to register when you spend the night at a hotel, and it would be a simple matter to consult the register at the Royal William. Then I thought of my performance at Edinburgh – alas, it was equally simple to register a fictitious name and address. Almost at once, however, I thought of something else – if there were a fictitious name in the register of the Royal William for the night of January 1, that would be a strong indication that my bar acquaintance was up to no good. It would not necessarily make him Y, but it would be strong presumptive evidence. However, if all we succeeded in doing was to turn up a fictitious name, we should not get far. Was there any other possible clue to identity?
I tried to visualise the pages of the Royal William’s register. There were the usual columns for room number, name, address and nationality, but there was another column for the number of one’s car – a practice increasingly adopted by hotels, so that if a parked car has to be moved they can more readily find the driver. I had not entered my car’s number when I signed and I recalled that the girl at the reception desk had specifically asked me to put it in – so I did. I thought it possible that a man might register in a false name and yet enter the proper number of his car – there is no immediate means of finding out about a false name, but the number of a car parked in a hotel forecourt is there for all to see.
When I next spoke to Paula on our arranged telephone system I asked her if she would go to Perth and look at the register in the Royal William for the night of January 1. There was no time on the telephone for long explanations, but neither of us asked for explanations from the other. Paula said that she would go to Perth next day. With our next call she told me the outcome of her visit. There were four names in the register, but two of them were women. The other entries were mine, and George Underwood, of 1768 Wellington Road, Stockport. He had a car, registration number TDF 149W.
There is a full set of directories in the telephone room at the club, and I looked up George Underwood in the volume covering Stockport. There was no Underwood with an address anything like 1768 Wellington Road. This was no proof that Mr George Underwood did not exist – merely that he was not listed in the telephone book. But I thought it unlikely that a salesman would not have a telephone, and even more unlikely that he would want to be ex-directory. His absence from the telephone book was at least suggestive. Inquiries could be made at Wellington Road if it seemed worthwhile, but for the moment I decided to concentrate on the car.
The AA book showed DF as a Gloucestershire registration and informed me that the licensing authority would supply me with the registered name and address of the owner on payment of twenty-five pence – but would do so only if I could satisfy them of ‘reasonable cause’ for wanting the information. What would be a ‘reasonable cause’? That I believed the owner to be a blackguard? Doubtfully, to the licensing mind. I could invent an accident, perhaps, or say I believed that a car with such a number had damaged my own vehicle in a car park. But had I reported the accident? To which police force? The more I thought about this procedure the less I liked it. I thought there was probably another way. My firm audited the accounts of Zenith Insurance, a company with a substantial amount of motor business. I was on lunching terms with the General Manager, Derek Clifford, so I invited him to lunch. After discussing the iniquities of taxation, the Government’s everlasting interference in business, the dishonesty of the public and the difficulty of making any money out of motor insurance, I said, ‘Derek, could you do me a kindness?’
‘If I can.’
‘Well, it’s like this. I was driving down to Henley the other day and on that roundabout where you come off the motorway a chap in a dam’ great Jaguar – at least I think it was a Jaguar – nearly killed me. I got his number. If I could find out who he was, I’d like to write to him and ask if he was on that roundabout at the time I was, and if he said yes I’d try to get him prosecuted for dangerous driving.’
‘You haven’t a hope,’ said Derek Clifford. ‘In the first place, he wouldn’t reply to your letter. In the second, if he did, he’d say he was in Blackpool on the day in question – I know the public. You could go to the police – but if he didn’t hit you, and you haven’t any witnesses I doubt if they’d proceed. They’ve an awful lot on their plate.’
‘Yes, I know all that. Still, I’d like to have a go,’ I said. ‘Get it off my chest, at any rate. Could one of your people find out who the owner of that registration is?’
‘Easy enough,’ he said. ‘You could do it yourself by writing to the licensing authority – or better, getting a solicitor to write to say that you are contemplating an action. But it may take a bit of time. We are constantly having to trace numbers, and we do it a different way. The hire-purchase people keep pretty up to date records of car registrations and changes of ownership. They have to, because there are such a lot of rogues about. We are quite often involved with the h.p. people in law cases that concern us both, and they’re good friends of ours. If we ask them to trace a car for us they can often come back with the information almost straightaway. If you give me the number I’ll do what I can, and send you a note.’
I thanked him and gave him the number and my Richmond address. He thanked me for the lunch and we shared a cab back to the City.
He was as good as his word and the post next morning did bring a letter from him. It told me that car number TDF 149W was registered in the name of Rhys Jenkins of Clydach House, Coleford, Forest of Dean. He had acquired the car new and it was just under two years old. My heart leaped at the typist’s carefully set-out lines
Make – Jaguar
Colour – Black
I felt like getting out my own car and driving down to Coleford straightaway but I forced myself to think more coldly. If X at least were keeping a sharp eye on me, the fewer my absences from the office, the better. It was a Friday – Coleford was a longish way, and I should need a whole day to get there and back and to make such inquiries as I could while there. A whole day out of the office would need a bit of arranging. I could go at the weekend but pubs at weekends are liable to be crowded. I wanted to try to find a quiet pub, with – if my luck held – a landlord who had been there for some years and who knew something about the citizens. Pubs tend to be quietest early in the week, so I decided to try to find an excuse for going off on Monday. On my way to the office I looked in at the club and found the Coleford telephone directory. Jenkins, Rhys, was duly listed as living at Clydach Ho, Coleford.
In the office I went to see Morgan-Jones. He was as affable as always. ‘I’m sorry to bother you on a personal matter,’ I said, ‘but I’ve had some rather disturbing news. I haven’t got many relations, but I do have an elderly aunt who lives at Cheltenham – she’s not really an aunt, she’s a distant cousin of my mother’s, but I always called her aunt. She’s close on eighty, and half-blind. The solicitor who looks after her affairs telephoned me last night. I know him quite well – we’re old personal friends. Apparently he’s been making a check of her investments, and some securities are unaccountably missing. There’s a hint of peculation by one of his clerks, who goes to see the old lady when there are papers for her to sign – you know, income tax forms and the like. Anyway, the solicitor has asked if I could go down on Monday to discuss what, if anything, we can do about it. Would you mind if I didn’t come in on Monday?’
‘Of course not, Dick,’ he said. ‘You’re getting on jolly well – those graphs you sent me last week were just what we need. One day more or less won’t matter.’
‘Well, thank you very much,’ I said.
*
Friday night was a Paula telephone night. She was waiting when I called the box at Shinness – she almost always was. I told her that her Mr Underwood was apparently a Mr Jenkins and that his car was a black Jaguar. I could almost feel her excitement on the line. ‘Oh, Richard,’ she said, ‘be careful. But it looks at last as if we’re really getting somewhere.’
‘Somewhere, perhaps – but where I just don’t know. There are lots of perfectly innocent black Jaguars. And Mr Jenkins may be engaged on no more than a sordid little adultery. But he’s got to be looked into somehow.’ I gave her the address in Coleford, just in case – well, it seemed wise that she should have a starting point in case it were necessary to make any inquiries about me.
*
For the benefit of anyone who might be interested in my movements that Monday morning I drove from Richmond to Oxford, which was a reasonable route for Cheltenham. By the time I got to Oxford I was fairly sure that no one was trying to follow me – no persistent car stayed in my mirror, nor did anyone keep passing me and dropping back. I reckoned that Oxford traffic anyway would shake off all but a near-miraculous pursuer, and at Oxford, instead of carrying on for Witney and the Cheltenham road I turned south for Faringdon and Lechlade, to make for Cirencester, Tetbury and the Severn Bridge.
*
Coleford is on the western outskirts of the Forest of Dean. It was raining slightly as I drove into it. I found a pub, but it was not the sort of place I wanted. It provided a drink and some tired ham sandwiches, and that was all. After that dispiriting experience I found a Post Office and inquired for Clydach House. I was told that it was a mile or so out along the Monmouth road, so I went there to have a look at the house. It was modern and neither attractive nor imposing. It may have been on the site of an older house, for it had a large garden with a thick shrubbery fronting the road – the growth of trees in the shrubbery implied that some, at least, had been there for a long time. The shrubbery was not well kept, though the gate bearing the name Clydach House was reasonably well-painted, and the drive to the house had been re-gravelled fairly recently.
About a quarter of a mile beyond the house, on the same side of the road, was a set of factory buildings, single-storey except for a small office block and all relatively new. A board proclaimed Clydach Engineering Works, and it appeared to be a flourishing concern. Several lorries and two or three light vans, all labelled Clydach Engineering, were in a loading bay, and there were signs of considerable activity. The place looked as if it might employ perhaps a couple of hundred people – substantial employment in that area.
Whether Clydach House had anything to do with Clydach Engineering I did not then know, although from its proximity it seemed probable that it had. I could think of no safe reason for calling at either the house or the works, and the last thing I wanted was to advertise my interest in either of them. I did want – and wanted badly – to get a look at Mr Jenkins.
The works extended to a slight bend in the road, which bore right and then climbed steeply. At the top of the rise a track led off into fields and a wood – it bore marks of being used mainly by tractors. It seemed utterly deserted. I prospected on foot along the track and into the wood, decided that it would take the car, and drove gingerly towards the trees. Near the entrance to the wood there was a patch of ground sufficiently firm to let me take the car off the track, and sufficiently shielded by brambles to make me, on that grey day, all but invisible to anyone not directly at hand.
By climbing into the lower branches of a tree at the edge of the wood I could look down at the factory. I had good glasses which I used at sea on Gudrid, and with them I could study comings and goings through the factory gates sufficiently clearly to feel confident that if my bar acquaintance were to appear, I should recognise him. I could not, however, observe Clydach House in any detail.
I had no luck. Lorries came and went the whole time and several cars, but no black Jaguar. I watched until it grew too dark to see properly, by which time I was three-parts frozen and thankful for the small flask of whisky in my pocket. I could still see to drive, and I drove back to the road without lights. It was not yet opening time, so I drove on into Monmouth and had a cup of what was called coffee at the railway station. At least it was hot.
I had reckoned on driving back through the night, and was not pressed for time. When I had finished my coffee it was getting on for six and I drove slowly back towards Coleford. On the road, shortly before I reached the Clydach works, there was a small pub, much more of a country pub than the place I’d gone to earlier. I stopped and went in.
It was as old, I thought, as the Wild Duck, and potentially nearly as attractive. But it did not have the trade of the yachting fraternity on the Crouch. It may have had a fair summer trade with tourists to Symond’s Yat and the Wye valley – there was a bar labelled ‘saloon’ which was probably a cocktail bar, but on that winter week-night it was in darkness and unheated. I turned into the public bar, which offered a blazing fire, a dartboard and pleasant old oak benches against wooden tables. An elderly man sitting with a stick beside him and a pint in front of him was the sole occupant. He said ‘Good evening’ civilly, and so did the landlord behind the bar. I ordered a large whisky and went over to warm my hands at the fire.
‘Glorious fire you’ve got,’ I said.
‘Scarcely pays for itself at this time of year,’ said the landlord. ‘But if you keep a pub you ought to try to make people comfortable.’
‘I wish there were more landlords with your views.’
‘Oh well, we do our best.’
I asked how long he’d been there.
‘In these parts? All my life, though I was at sea for a while. I took over the pub from my father, let me see now, ten – no, twelve – years ago.’
I asked about the Free Miners and their ancient rights in the Forest. He was interested and well-versed in local tradition. We lamented the destruction of so many of the old ways of life. I ordered another whisky and asked if he would join me. He accepted a glass of bitter. The elderly man’s pint was getting low so I asked if I might fill it up. He too accepted – we had become a small community.
After talking a bit more about the district generally, I said as casually as I could, ‘I met a man not long ago who lives, I think, somewhere near about. Chap called Rhys Jenkins. Have you ever come across him?’
‘Can’t say he uses the pub,’ said the landlord, ‘but of course we know him. He’s the big noise round here. Owns the engineering works just down the road.’
There was an awkward sort of silence. I had a strange impression of having unmasked something the locality would prefer to forget. The elderly man said slowly, ‘I’ve got no cause to love Rhys Jenkins, Mister. Hope he’s not a close friend of yours.’
‘Heavens, no,’ I said. ‘I met him at a cocktail party in London before Christmas. We found ourselves standing together and I remember his telling me that he came from the Forest of Dean.’
‘Aye, that’s the sort of place you would meet him,’ said the elderly man. ‘He’s often in London now – more often than here. He’s grown big, he has. Big, but––’
The landlord interrupted. He was clearly unhappy. ‘Never mind now, Dave,’ he said gently. ‘It was all a long time ago.’
‘Well, as I scarcely know him, it doesn’t matter.’ I ordered more drinks. ‘But what did happen?’
The landlord shrugged his shoulders. The elderly man went on, ‘It’s hard to explain the ins and outs. Jack – the landlord here – is quite right. Nothing matters any longer. I’ve got a disablement pension and Stan, my boy in Australia, sends me a bit from time to time. But what would you feel, Mister if you’d had a partner, worked together from boys to build up a business, and then you went off to the war and when you got back with a load of shrapnel in your knee, you found that your partner had grown big and your share of the business had vanished?’
‘Dave, that’s just what you say––’
‘It’s the truth, though, Jack, and I don’t care who knows it. Rhys Jenkins is a hard man. Then there was that business of his daughter––’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ said the landlord.
‘But it has. It’s all part of the same story. Why did Megan go away from home?’
‘Because she wanted a job in London, like most girls nowadays,’ said the landlord.
‘Bah. She didn’t need no job in London. And she had my Stan. They’d have been married long ago now, if––’
‘If what?’ I asked.
‘Well, Mister, Jack’s right. I suppose it’s none of my business to talk about it. But this Rhys Jenkins you met is a hard man. He had a daughter, Megan – took after her mother who was a Davis from Lydbrook and a grand lass, but she died when Megan was a child. Rhys Jenkins is not a proper Forest man – his people come from Llanelly. Megan took after her mother and everybody loved her. All save her father, that is. He made life such hell for her with the women he took home, and his general ways, that she went off – ran off – to London. My Stan wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t – said she was ashamed of her family. So she went off to London and got a job with the Coal Board, typing at their big headquarters place. And then – look, Mister, I’ve carried the inquest in my pocket all these years.’
He was dreadfully moved. The landlord said nothing. The man called Dave brought out a battered old wallet stuffed with papers and a few faded snapshots. He handed me a newspaper cutting. It was from a Gloucestershire weekly going back nearly sixteen years and it reported an inquest on Miss Megan Jenkins who had died in University College Hospital after being taken there from her lodgings in Bloomsbury. Her landlady had found her in a state of collapse and had called a doctor. The girl had died from the effects of a badly performed attempt to procure an abortion. She was just nineteen. No facts other than physical, medical facts had come to light at the inquest. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter by some person or persons unknown. Apparently nothing further had ever come to light.
